SQLAuthority News

SQL Server 2014 was released earlier this year and it has been extremely popular in Microsoft world. Here is the announcement for everyone, who have been asking me to build a tutorial around SQL Server 2014. I have authored latest Pluralsight courses on the subject of SQL Server 2014. This course is 4 hours and 17 minutes long, but the best part is that this course contains all the latest features of SQL Server 2014. I have build this course with the assumption that DBA is familiar with earlier versions of SQL Server and wants to explore and learn new features of SQL Server 2014.

The Challenge I Faced

The biggest challenge I faced was how to come up with the outline for the course. The reason is that there are so many different features introduced in SQL Server 2014 that is will be difficult to cover each of the features in a single course. I wanted to cover the topics which are the most relevant and useful to developers, but in addition I also wanted to cover the topics which may be useful to develop if they know that they exists in the product. I finally decided to depend on blog readers and few of the SQL Experts. I reached out to selected 20 people via email and gave them a list of the topics which I should be covering in this course. They all work in different organizations and have a good understanding about the need of the DBA and Developers.

Based on their feedback, I was able to come up with a very good outline which is currently very popular with Pluralsight library. Lots of people have asked me how was I able to come up with a course content outline so accurately. The credit for the same goes to the developers and DBA, who have voted in the topics and have helped me to build a very solid outline for the course.

Outline of the Course

Here is a quick outline for the course:

Introduction

Backup Enhancements

Security Enhancements

Columnstore Enhancements

Online Data Operations Enhancements

Enhancements with Microsoft Azure

SSD Buffer Pool Extensions

Resource Governor IO

Miscellaneous Features

Online Index Rebuilding

Live Plans for Long Running Queries

Transaction Durability

Cardinality Estimation

In Memory OLTP Optimization

Well, I had a great fun working on the topics which I have mentioned in the outline. I am very confident that once you start with the course, you will indeed understand how each of the topics builds and presented. I have made sure that each of the topic has a vivid and clear story to begin with. I first explain the story and right after that I explain the concept.

Who Should Attend This Course

Everyone who has basic knowledge of SQL Server and wants to update themselves with SQL Server 2014. They should attend this course. One thing I have made sure that this course is easy to understand and I have decided complex subject into multiple parts. This way the learning is progressive and anyone with a poor knowledge of the subject can have enough time to understand the presented concept.

Screenshot of the Course

Here are few of the screenshot of the courses.

How to Watch Video Course

This course is available at Pluralsight, and you will need a valid login to Pluralsight. If you do not have Pluralsight login, you can quickly sign up for the FREE Trial.

I love presenting at various forums on various technologies. I am extremely excited that I got invited to speak at Falafel Conference 2014 in San Francisco. I will present two technology sessions on SQL Server. If you are into web development or if you just want to attend a conference with the best of the industry speakers, this may be the right conference for you. What set apart this conference from other conference is technology presented as well as speakers. Usually one has to attend very expensive and high scale event when they have to hear good speakers. At this conference, you will find quite a many industry legends are available to present on the bleeding edge technology.

Here are few of the reasons why I believe you should attend this conference:

Choose from four tracks covering Web, Mobile development and testing, Sitefinity, and Automated Testing, or attend sessions from all four!

Learn from the best developers and testers in the business in an intimate setting.

Surround yourself with your peers and the opportunity to network

Learn about the latest platforms and technologies including Kendo UI, AngularJS, ASP.NET MVC, WebAPI, and more!

Here are the details for the sessions which I am going to present at Falafel Conference.

Secrets of SQL Server: Database Worst PracticesAbstract: Chances are you have heard, or even uttered, this expression. This demo-oriented session will show many examples where database professionals were dumbfounded by their own mistakes, and could even bring back memories of your own early DBA days. The goal of this session is to expose the small details that can be dangerous to the production environment and SQL Server as a whole, as well as talk about worst practices and how to avoid them. Shedding light on some of these perils and the tricks to avoid them may even save your current job. After attending this session, Developers will only need 60 seconds to improve performance of their database server in their SharePoint implementation. We will have a quiz during the session to keep the conversation alive. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. Additionally, all attendees of the session will have access to learning material presented in the session.

The Unsung HeroAbstract: Slow Running Queries are the most common problem that developers face while working with SQL Server. While it is easy to blame the SQL Server for unsatisfactory performance, however the issue often persists with the way queries have been written, and how Indexes has been set up. The session will focus on the ways of identifying problems that slow down SQL Server, and Indexing tricks to fix them. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session.

Register Now!

I have learned from the Falafel Team that they are running out of tickets and soon they will close the registration. For next 10 days the price for the registration is only USD 149. Trust me, you can’t get such a world class training and networking opportunity at such a low price. Click to Register Here!

Personal Note

When I was young, I was always looking forward to my birthday as on this day, I used to get gifts from everybody.

Now when I am getting old on each of my birthday, I have almost same feeling but the direction is different. Now on each of my birthday, I feel like giving gifts to everybody. I have received lots of support, love and respect from everybody; and now I must return it back.Well, on this birthday, I have very unique gifts for everybody – my latest course on SQL Server.

How I Tune Performance

I often get questions where I am asked how do I work on a normal day. I am often asked that how do I work when I have performance tuning project is assigned to me. Lots of people have expressed their desire that they want me to explain and demonstrate my own method of solving performance problem when I am facing real world problem. It is a pretty difficult task as in the real world, nothing goes as planned and usually planned demonstrations have no place there.

The real world, demands real solutions and in a timely fashion. If a consultant goes to industry and does not demonstrate his/her capabilities in very first few minutes, it does not matter how much fame he/she is, the door is shown to them eventually. It is true and in my early career, I have faced it quite commonly. I have learned the trick to be honest from the start and request absolutely transparent communication from the organization where I am to consult.

Play by Play

Play by Play is a very unique setup. It is not planned and it is a step by step course. It is like a reality show – a very real encounter to the problem and real problem solving approach. I had a great time doing this course. Geoffrey Grosenbach (VP of Pluralsight) sits down with me to see what a SQL Server Admin does in the real world. This Play-by-Play focuses on SQL Server performance tuning and I go over optimizing queries and fine-tuning the server.

The table of content of this course is very simple.

Introduction

In the introduction I explained my basic strategies when I am approached by a customer for performance tuning.

Basic Information Gathering

In this module I explain how I do gather various information for performance tuning project. It is very crucial to demonstrate to customers for consultant his capability of solving problem. I attempt to resolve a small problem which gives a big positive impact on performance, consultant have to gather proper information from the start. I demonstrate in this module, how one can collect all the important performance tuning metrics.

Removing Performance Bottleneck

In this module, I build upon the previous module’s statistics collected. I analysis various performance tuning measures and immediately start implementing various tweaks on the performance, which will start improving the performance of my server. This is a very effective method and it gives immediate return of efforts.

Index Optimization

Indexes are considered as a silver bullet for performance tuning. However, it is not true always there are plenty of examples where indexes even performs worst after implemented. The key is to understand a few of the basic properties of the index and implement the right things at the right time. In this module, I describe in detail how to do index optimizations and what are right and wrong with Index. If you are a DBA or developer, and if your application is running slow – this is must attend module for you. I have some really interesting stories to tell as well.

Optimize Query with Rewrite

Every problem has more than one solution, in this module we will see another very famous, but hard to master skills for performance tuning – Query Rewrite. There are few do’s and don’ts for any query rewrites. I take a very simple example and demonstrate how query rewrite can improve the performance of the query at many folds. I also share some real world funny stories in this module.

As today is my birthday – I will give 10 people (randomly) who will express their desire to learn this course, a free code. Please leave your comment and I will send you free code to watch this course for free.

In the past couple of months many of us heard about the new SQL Server 2014 and its In-Memory technologies, such as In-Memory OLTP for high-transactional application and the ColumnStore INDEX’s for BI apps. This comes in addition to various in-memory technologies outside of the SQL Server world, such as Oracle, IBM or few NewSQL startups.

There are plenty of benefits for in-memory solutions:

Offloading expensive repeated database requests

Acceleration of Database speed and application performance

Scalability of applications

Reducing database resources and licensing costs

The level of interest in performance in-memory technologies is clearly on a rise, so we’ll try to provide you with interesting news, investigation summaries and interesting webcasts, especially when it comes to the SQL Server databases, applications and users.

Choosing the right solution for you can be based on many factors:

Application stage: a Greenfield new application, a Live production homegrown application or Commercial off-the-shelf application

Effort level and time available to resolve a challenge: the level of effort, resources and costs you want to apply in setup, development, testing and deployment

Personally, I love webinars as they give an opportunity to learn very quickly one or two technologies; many times combining a view from 10,000 feet down to practical 100 foot level; learn various technologies aspects; either how to get started or help defining a realistic plan.

The webinar plans to review the SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP, how it works, various scenarios where it fits more and less, key benefits, key limitations (and how to overcome some of them), things to consider when planning to use it. Additionally the webinar will review SafePeak’s Automated In-Memory Caching for SQL Server applications, it’s internals or how it works, where it fits more and where it fits less, and run a technologies comparison of both SQL 2014 In-Memory OLTP and SafePeak Caching – and probably (as usually happens) show a live demo of both technologies to get a better grip of the content.

The best part of being in the technology domain is that I get a lot of opportunity to talk and write at different places. I travel quite a bit in lengths to deliver some of my learnings with audiences around the world. These learnings and writings as in this blog have influenced and encouraged a number of others to also jump into the blogging or writing habit. I cherish and love doing these outside of this site too. Recently, I wrote a couple of whitepapers and thought it was worth a call here over this blog too. What are these whitepapers all about?

Beginning Performance Tuning

If you want to learn a new competency, where would you start? One cannot wake up on a warm sunny day and start driving on their own. There is a process, steps and most importantly a learning part from an expert to get them started. And over a period of time this practice will make them expert too. The analogy hold good even here. There is no silver bullet to performance tuning and there is no “it depends” to performance tuning.

The facts and the process to learn is what gets discussed in this whitepaper. The best person to start performance testing are the developers and DBAs of the application itself. They exactly know the architecture, workload, dependencies and how access happens in the system. In this whitepaper I talk about this fundamental process first and then delve into some of the simplest techniques I have used for ages to do performance testing.

Performance Enhancements with SQL Server 2014

Second in series that I wrote was around Performance Enhancements with SQL Server 2014. The need to upgrade to the latest stack always has its own challenges and administrators are constantly looking at the need to understand the new features so that it can help them at work. This constant struggle and need to learn, implement and troubleshoot the latest and greatest is a challenge in itself.

In this whitepaper, I take my random 4 picks of performance enhancements with SQL Server 2014 which I personally felt are worth a mention. Some of them include ColumnStore Index, Managed Lock Priority, Buffer Pool Extensions and more. I take an introduction to each of these enhancements and what these features bring to the table for an administrator / developer. In reality, each of these topics warrant a whole whitepaper but I am sure the future blogs will contain some of these for sure. Stay tuned on that.

I am sure you will enjoy these whitepapers and the best part is they are absolutely FREE. So do download them and let me know your thoughts. Would love to incorporate some of them in my future writing on this blog or papers I write.

The other day I received this question in via Facebook. Fill factor is the value that determines the percentage of space on each leaf-level page to be filled with data. In an SQL Server, the smallest unit is a page, which is made by Page with size 8K. Every page can store one or more rows based on the size of the row. The default value of the Fill Factor is 100, which is same as value 0. The default Fill Factor (100 or 0) will allow the SQL Server to fill the leaf-level pages of an index with the maximum numbers of the rows it can fit. There will be no or very little empty space left on the page, when the fill factor is 100.

I decided to build a quick video which explains how to change fill factor with the help of T-SQL as well as SSMS.

When we have to move a database from one server to another server or when we have to move a database from one file to another file, we commonly use Database Attach or Detach process. I have been doing this for quite a while as well. Recently, when I was visiting an organization I found that in this organization lots of developers are still using an older version of the code to attach the database. I quickly pointed that out to them the new method to attach the database, however it was really interesting to find out that they really did not know that sp_attach_db is now a deprecated method to attach the database. This really made me to do today’s SQL in Sixty Seconds. I demonstrate in this SQL in Sixty Seconds how to attach or detach the database using a new method of attaching database.

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About Pinal Dave

Pinal Dave is a Pluralsight Developer Evangelist. He has authored 11 SQL Server database books, 17 Pluralsight courses and have written over 3200 articles on the database technology on his blog at a http://blog.sqlauthority.com. Along with 11+ years of hands on experience he holds a Masters of Science degree and a number of certifications, including MCTS, MCDBA and MCAD (.NET). His past work experiences include Technology Evangelist at Microsoft and Sr. Consultant at SolidQ. Follow @pinaldave
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an email at pinal@sqlauthority.com

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